Well, 2023 is never going to be in the list of Top Ten years of my life. I’m not going to dwell on the personal aspects of it – or my shocking performance in this year’s Fantasy Premier League – but I’m very hopeful for a brighter 2024. Personally, that is – the FPL team is still a bag of sh*te.

I would be remiss though if I didn’t give a few thanks. Thank you to all the staff at Gloucester and Cheltenham Hospitals for all the care you gave my Dad, and for all the support you gave my Mum in this difficult time. Thanks to all my friends, family and work colleagues for their support and understanding at the time. And thank you to Broad Lane Vets, for helping us to care for Carrie in her final days.

Thanks also to you, dear reader, whether you be a subscriber, an author, a fellow blogger or just happened upon this post by accident. Every single view makes this silly little hobby of mine seem worthwhile.

And one final belated thank you to Big Finish Productions. If you’re not aware, they produce top notch audio dramas, primarily of Doctor Who. Over the past few years, I’ve spent a multitude of hours driving up and down the M5, not knowing what I was going to find at the other end. Big Finish helped keep me sane over these car trips – so thank you to the writers, the directors, the producers, the actors and anyone else who I’ve forgotten.

But let’s take a look at the blog and the various ups and downs of my reading this year.

I have the feeling that this year I gave up on more books than usual. Have I been less patient than before? Maybe. Maybe I’ve become pickier. Maybe I’m just grumpier in my old age. Hence my Doc-ologue, explaining what I like in a mystery. I wasn’t expecting an author to recommend his own work based on it, but I’m thankful that’s exactly what J S Savage did.

Having said that, I’ve read 36 new authors this year, ten more than 2022, so I’m pretty pleased with that. A quick scan down the names of the authors and there are a good few there that I’m really looking forward to revisiting or reading the next book from. So let’s start with:

Best New Authors (To Me):

• Jesse Sutanto – Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice For Murderers
• Stig Abell – Death Under A Little Sky
• Kat Ailes – The Expectant Detectives
• Anthony Slayton – A Most Efficient Murder
• J L Blackhurst – Three Card Murder
• Andreina Cordani – The Twelve Days Of Murder
• J S Savage – The Mystery Of Treefall Manor
• Douglas Skelton – An Honourable Thief

What disappointed me a bit was that I didn’t come across any new classic authors that caught my fancy – OK, perhaps Lange Lewis, but the jury’s out there. I suppose that there can’t that many more Brian Flynn’s out there… can there?

Best Historical Mysteries

Didn’t read anywhere near as many as I usually do, but there were some top-notch titles there. Oh, and just so you know GOLDEN AGE PASTICHES ARE NOT HISTORICAL MYSTERIES!!!

• An Honourable Thief/A Thief’s Justice – Douglas Skelton
• Dark Queen Wary/Murder Most Treasonable – Paul Doherty
• Murdering The Messenger – Michael Jecks

That was about it – I read some duffers this year that shall not be named here – but I am looking forward to Mike Jecks’ new book set in Shanghai, One Last Dance Before I Die…

The “That Was Unnecessary” Award

The Mysterious Case Of The Alperton Angels, Janice Hallett’s third novel, is one that I found really creepy, not being a fan of the true crime books that this is inspired by, but when the author decided to mention some real-life UK crime victims, I just found this rather horrible…

Oh, and you can add in the detail of the serial killer’s shenanigans in Breakneck Point too. Urgh.

The “Am I A Genius?” Award

So, am I some sort of genius for thinking that almost every aspect of the solution to Tom Hindle’s The Murder Game was just so obvious… or was it just me? It’s a fun book though…

The “Well, That Dated Badly” Award

How odd that books from from more recent times seem to have dated worse than books from the fifties and earlier. Anyway, the sexual attitudes in Colin Dexter’s Last Seen Wearing made it a very tricky read.

The “No Animal Cruelty Here” Award

Delighted to say that no owls are murdered in Glyn Carr’s Murder Of An Owl. Just a teenage boy… which is obviously terrible, but somehow an owl seems worse. Not sure what that says about me.

The “Are Other People Reading The Same Book” Award

Josephine Tey’s The Franchise Affair. Tedious and pointless, in my humble opinion. Not in anyone else’s though, it seems.

The “Read The American Version” Award

Murder In Three Acts, aka Three Act Tragedy, has a different motive in the US version, arguably that makes it more of a tragedy than the UK version, which I do think works better.

And I still think this book was planned as a Harley Quin novel, not an Hercule Poirot one…

The “Twin Titles” Award(s)

Two books titled Murder Under The Tuscan Sun, believe it or not. One’s beautifully written but not a mystery novel and the other is a reasonable cosy. Neither set the world on fire though…

The “Twin Titles By The Same Author” Award

Finally read John Rhode’s Up The Garden Path, as opposed to Miles “John Rhode” Burton’s Up The Garden Path – it’s the lesser of the two titles, the Burton one is much better.

The “Head-Kicking Consultancy” Award

Still one of my happiest moments in my blogging career when Mike Craven asked for my advice on the physics involved in someone getting kicked in the head for Fearless.

The “Difficult Second Book” Award

Two books that I read this year were real disappointments. They were the second book in a series where I’d really enjoyed the first. Actually, there was a third where I didn’t even finish the sequel as the humour that I’d found fresh in the first book found forced in the second, so I didn’t mention it. But this award goes to Clare Mackintosh’s A Game Of Lies – even though the previous book could have been a standalone, she found effective ways to continue the lead character’s story while still telling a great story.

The ”Pretty Sure AI Doesn’t Work Like That But Who Cares” Award

Jo Callaghan’s In The Blink Of An Eye could have just been a mismatched buddy cop story of a luddite paired with a hologram version of Data but it ended up being a gripping mystery with characters you cared about. Quite an achievement.

The “It’s Got A Tiger In It” Award

This goes to Death Of A Lesser God by Vaseem Khan. Because it’s got a tiger in it. And I like tigers.

The “Cosy? Yeah, Right…” Award

According to Amazon (and not the author), A Hundred Thousand Dragons by Dolores Gordon-Smith is a cosy mystery. Enjoy the torture scene, dear readers (and the rest of the book, it’s really good).

The “Most Locked Locked-Room” Award

The nuclear bunker in 77 North, the conclusion to D L Marshall’s trilogy, is probably as locked as a room can be.

The “Love It Or Hate It” Award

The solution to the Ferris wheel shooting in Tom Mead’s The Murder Wheel – you’ll love it or hate it. I absolutely loved it…

The “Are Other People Reading The Same Book 2” Award

The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett just felt like a cash grab for the Christmas market to me. The mystery is weak and it wasn’t that funny either…

The “World’s Only Locked Lake Mystery” Award

Plaudits to Victoria Dowd for creating a locked lake mystery in Murder Most Cold and finding a sensible way to make it work.

The “Read The Book, Marketing Department” Award

The “Mycroft” in Reply Paid by H F Heard (and the other two books in the series) is NOT MYCROFT HOLMES!!! So stop advertising them as Mycroft Holmes mysteries…

The “Are Other People Reading The Same Book 3” Award

Maybe it’s just my ex-Twitter stream but The Last Passenger by Will Dean was an entertaining read but that’s all… And I find it very interesting that to make the title work, the blurb completely ignores the other people left on the boat…

The “Grand Puzzly” Award

And so we come to the award for my favourite read of the year, the Grand Puzzly. The contenders, by winning (or sharing) the Puzzly for one of the months of 2023 are:

• An Honourable Thief – Douglas Skelton
• The Wrecker’s Curse – Jo Silva
• The Black Spectacles – John Dickson Carr
• The Birthday Girl – Sarah Ward
• The Expectant Detectives – Kat Ailes
• Sepulchre Street – Martin Edwards
• Fearless – M W Craven
• A Game Of Lies – Clare Mackintosh
• Three Card Murder – J L Blackhurst
• The Murder Wheel – Tom Mead
• The Twelve Days Of Murder – Andreina Cordani
• Murder Most Cold – Victoria Dowd
• The Mystery Of Treefall Manor – J S Savage
• The Queen Of Poisons – Robert Thorogood

I’ll be honest, I don’t think a single book from this list smashed it out of the park ahead of the rest, so this is a tricky choice.

OK, for the sheer originality of a locked lake mystery – and the rest of the book, obviously – the Grand Puzzly this year goes to Victoria Dowd for Murder Most Cold. On a different day, it could have been almost any of the other titles in this list though, but it’s not a different day, so congratulations, Victoria!

So to everyone reading this, may I wish you the best possible 2024 – apart from Rishi Sunak and the rest of the Tory party. I’d include Donald Trump as well, but let’s face it, reading isn’t exactly one of his strengths so I doubt he’ll see this.

Resolutions? Well, it would be nice after thirteen years to finally get a visit on the blog from… checks… Niger, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Timor-Leste, Vanuatu and North Korea. Here’s hoping for next year.

Also, should any author who wants someone to cast an eye over a potential classic mystery to see if it satisfies the Doc-ologue, then feel free to give me a shout for a free plot-focussed proof-read…

See you in the New Year for review number 1613…